my journey from gluttonous to glorious

{Disclaimer: I wrote most of this on Sunday… but never got around to finishing it.}

Oh my… the words “might as well” are like the kiss of death for someone who struggles with gluttony.

Well, I already ate a few Oreos, so I might as well eat the whole bag.
I broke my diet this morning, so I might as well eat an entire bag of chips.
I ate the rest of my leftover hamburger from last night, so I might as well eat some pizza too.

Yeah… that last one… that was me… today.

You see, I had my first “birthday party” celebration night on Saturday night. My husband’s birthday is… oh, well, it’s tomorrow! {Happy Birthday my love!} And so we went out with some friends to BJ’s Brewhouse to celebrate (and then we were going to go to Top Golf to hang out and play there, but the wait was FOUR. HOURS. LONG.) and since it was a birthday PARTY, I was “allowed” to eat whatever. I thought I did pretty good… I ate some chips, had half of a hamburger (yummmmm) and half of my fries, and had a couple glasses of wine.

I felt GREAT! I mean… I had not busted out into gluttony. It was just as I hoped it would be.

And thennnnnnnnnn, came today.

You see, we got the boys and the babysitter cheese pizzas while we were gone, and gosh darnit, but those dadgum pizzas slices looked and smelled amazing. And I thought about them, and thought about them, and thought about them… this morning and then again when I got home from church.

So, instead of eating the pizzas, I ate the other half of the hamburger leftovers. Honestly, I think this was my downfall even more than the eventual pizza “incident” cause I ate what I WASN’T craving. I wanted that pizza. All I really wanted was that pizza, but instead I chose to eat the hamburger because it could kindabe justified in my mind as “okay” since I had gotten it at the birthday party the night before. But the pizza… well, it was just off limits all around, and I knew it.

So, I ate the other half of my hamburger.

And THEN I ate a piece of pizza.

Because, you know, I might as well since I had already broken the covenant by having that hamburger.

Honestly, I only ate one piece of pizza because I felt I had to sneak eat it, and then I went to put my sons down for their naps and while I was doing that my husband ate all the rest of the pizza. My plan was foiled. But I was sorta glad because then it took the opportunity away from me.

But what I want to focus in on is the “might as well” syndrome. Cause I’m purty dern sure the that “might as well” syndrome is what takes someone from being just a food addict to being a glutton… that is probably really overweight like I was. Because this phrase is what gives us “permission” to break from our diet, or covenant, or healthy lifestyle.

But WHY?

I… don’t know why actually! Haha! But I know that it is… it is a get out of jail free card, only it is exactly what puts us IN JAIL. This phrase overrides our good decision making and puts us back under the control of our body’s desires to eat whatever we want, as much as we want, whenever we want.

And honestly, I have no new fancy scriptures on my heart that tie to this. I obviously didn’t have anything that dissuaded me from breaking my covenant. And I don’t mind admitting that I’m feeling a bit defeated. It’s like I have had God’s power in my hand for a year, and now it’s… just gone. It’s like I lost it in my miscellaneous junk drawer and can’t find it. And even worse, I don’t really feel like digging for it. I’d rather just… sin.

Just keeping it real. Sorry to be Debbie Downer, but hopefully over the next few days and weeks I’ll work through this and then if you hit this spot too then it’ll help you work through it as well!

The other day when it snowed (again) here in Texas, I was on my phone constantly… updating, uploading, reading, commenting, etc. and I realized that by like 11:00am my phone’s battery was already down to 34%!!!

Then last night I went to a bible study on prayer and one of the ladies mentioned that she just got off of facebook because of the inordinate amount of time that she was spending on it. The leader then read a quote that was something along the lines of: technology is stealing our time away from personal time with God.

It’s hard to ignore things like that. So I just… deleted the app. I figured, let’s see where that takes me. I have another little app that allows me to post things (like pics of my kids and whatnot) without actually getting on facebook, so I don’t have to be completely disconnected from it… yet. But I think I’m going to just get to the point where I’ll post stuff and then I can check it once at night for like five minutes.

Annnnnnnnd, how is this related to my covenant diet?

Well, in a way, it’s related more so to a covenant life… and today, just having that app off of my phone… I was a better wife, a better mom, a better me. There wasn’t so much distraction… there wasn’t so much of me thinking about what other people were thinking… and every time I opened up my phone to get on facebook, and that app wasn’t there, I was just reminded that there is so much frivolous stuff in my life that keeps me from my full potential. The full potential that God has for me.

And, honestly, I think we all have something like a facebook-type-distraction in our life. It might not actually be facebook itself, but it’s something that steals from our focus on Him…

I mean… seriously, I could make a mamma-jamma of a list here. And the hard part about this is that most of those things aren’t inherently “bad”. I mean, working out? Not “bad”. Food, not “bad”. Work, haha, for a lot of people not only is it not bad but necessary! But I know that so often I say to myself or to others, “Well, I just don’t have time to devote to prayer.” But really… really. I have time. I just put other stuff in there and then say I don’t have time. And sometimes, just like I had to do with sugar, I just have to cut that “thing” out of my life, or at least cut down on it a lot.

When I think about it, I just don’t want to watch my life played back for me in Heaven as I sit next to Christ and see how many hoursssssss I spent on facebook being played before me compared to how many minutes I spent communicating with God. meditating on God. acting for God’s glory. reading God’s Word.

If all it takes is deleting an app and limiting myself to five minutes a day and replacing it with Him, well… I know that I can do that. This past year of finding the power of God within me has shown me that. With God… all things are possible (Mark 10:27). Even cutting down on my facebook time! Ha!

I’m not lying, nor am I being overdramatic (at least not on purpose) when I say that I felt like a new woman. I have felt refreshed. clear. happy. rested. optimistic. energetic. And all of that with a few “user error” issues having only slept about four hours last night and through a few bouts of grieving. I can’t really explain how surprised I was at just two days of being “on” the stuff!

When I posted about it on day 339, I only really covered the story between me, my mother, and the B12. But I started to see a parallel recently… and I’ll do one of those annoying analogies for ya so all that SAT practice will pay off finally! Haha!

B12 : Body :: Power Of God : Soul

B12 is a boost of energy for my body just like the Power of God is a boost of energy for my soul.

This time last year, I was crushed and defeated. My energy for life was just… depleted. I could feel my hope wavering and was starting to just resign myself to the fact that my life was going to be… average.

As I turn to Him and believe in His Power… I feel my life and my soul being rejuvenated. And it was so quick… I mean… it was like I had been almost blind to the fact that I could tap into that power my whole life. (Heck, at times, I’m still blind to it.) And when thinking of what verse might “support” the fact that God has power (haha… yeah, I know… just ONE verse… I had to narrow it down from like, oh, I dunno… THE WHOLE BIBLE) but I was reminded of this one statement that Jesus made to his disciples when they asked Him to help them increase their faith:

If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and thrown into the sea,’ and it would obey you!Luke 17:6

That verse just reminded me… how awesome God is that He can do AMAZING and POWERFUL things with my itty bitty teensy weensy faith. And that’s just what He’s done this year… amazing and powerful things in my life with my tiny bit of faith. Just like that B12 pill is so little… but it worked what feels like a mini-miracle in my life. And that mustard seed of faith… it worked a miracle in my life as well.

I was gonna jump in to how I started eating my son’s leftover Cheerios last night and be all “oh no, I ate bad again… yada yada yada”, and then I was all like, yeah, but that one moment doesn’t characterize my entire day. Maybe I shouldn’t just jump right into talking about my failures. Maybe I have been a wee too focused on my failures. Maybe I should look more at the things that were successes. The areas where God’s power is working and, slowly, becoming evident.

But, the title was too clever for me to trash, so I kept that part. Ha!

First of all, just ignoring Facebook yesterday morning and reading some bible and then blogging. That was a huge step (especially because that dadgum post was giving me so much trouble… I mean, I tried to post that thing like four times and it kept deleting chunks or just not posting, but I was pretty determined to get that done. It sorta felt like Satan was trying to work some evil in keeping me from posting it).

And then this afternoon, I prayed again for fifteen minutes. I almost missed it and I just had this unsettled feeling, so I stopped folding the baskets, and baskets, and baskets of clean clothes and went into my room and prayed. I just prayed praise and thanks to God for being… well, for being awesome.

Yesterday at one point… I ate an orange! Haha! I had to kind of force myself away from the pantry, but I ate an orange instead of junk.

I started out the day really repeating scripture. This sorta petered off as the day went on (as did my focus) but it was a great start to the day. Writing this now puts my mind back on the scriptures that I posted yesterday.

God, you are the one who saves me.
God, you are right beside me.
God, you are able to do more than I can imagine.

And an oldie that came back to my mind this morning in the shower…God, make me willing to obey.

I am having to just take each day at a time and each hour at a time and find those spots where I can call to God, rely on God, praise God, and read or say the Words of God.

So, maybe CheeriUh-Oh was the right title. Cheerio to living life by myself and helllllo reliance on God!

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The other day as I went shopping, I started trying to figure out how long I had been on the covenant in “months”. I write down every day what day I am on but for a non-math person I have to take a moment to divide by 30… and even then I usually abandon that method and just count the months since January 11th when I started.

So by that method I am a little past four months. Cool!

And then it hit me. Had I only done 3 months like I originally planned then I would have been finished with the covenant last month. And I would have missed out on the last month of blessings.

And looking back at those days I am so glad that I chose to stick to God for a full year. Or I should say that I am so grateful that He called me to stick by Him for a full year.

Honestly it makes me wonder what my life would/could be like if I chose to do this covenant indefinitely. I mean… when I first started I would have thought it was nigh impossible to stay on this covenant for five years, twenty years, the rest of my life… but now I honestly have a lot less respect for the word impossible.

Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”Matthew 19:26

Last year at this time I was sifting through my clothes and giving away almost all my size 8s, 10s, and 12s that I had been keeping in hopes that I would some day get skinny again. I was, in essence, giving up.

Last year, I did not really understand that what has happened was actually possible with God. Because, yes humanly speaking, me… being frees from food… it was impossible at that point. There was nothing that was gonna work to that end.

But, now I see… when you have the power of God on your side, and when you allow God to work His Power inside of you… really, really, really… ev.ery.thing. is possible.

It sorta makes me want to, like, take on the world! It makes me realize that this covenant diet is minuscule compared to what He can really do. And yet this covenant diet is the biggest thing that I have ever seen God do in my life.

Looks like I have an impossible life coming my way!

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I got a new (free) app on my phone and was messing with it last night before bed. My friend Gayle (yep, changed her name too) asked me the other day if I had really looked, like at pictures or something, to tell the difference of how much weight I had lost. I really hadn’t so I plugged in a “before” photo and a “now” photo that was very similar to see the difference. And I was actually almost shocked! Now, I by no means thought that I was ugly before… I actually thought I was quite pretty. Not to sound stuck up but I always thought that I had a great smile and God has gifted me with a joyful spirit with which to use that smile. I was more so shocked at the mere difference.

So I posted this pic to her Facebook…

With this caption…So remember the other day you asked me if I had really looked at myself to see the change? Well, last night I got a new app and was messing with it and I put these two pics next to each other (sorta like a before and after I guess) and doing that I was pretty amazed at the difference!!! So thanks for bringing that up!

Well I didn’t think about the fact that my other friends would also see the pic and several of them commented.

And I was thinking about how cool it has been to lose weight because of God. I mean, it is nice to have an outward evidence of my inward healing.

And even though I have used the following verse before it has jumped out again to me about why it is such a blessing to be able to a) be healed of my food addiction, and b) be able to have my healing cause people to ask about God… so that His Power Might be shown in me, and hopefully in others as well.

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I hate to say this, but fasting from Facebook for Lent has been really, really good for me.

Yes, I’ll admit… I got on there last Thursday in a desperate attempt to use my social network to find the much loved Tigger stuffed animal that my son threw out of the car window at a local intersection. But other than that I haven’t gotten on there.

But just like fasting from food certain foods (and yes, this will tie into my covenant diet in a second), I find that I very quickly just tried to replace my Facebooking habits with another app. Just like I mentioned here when I tried to replace my chocolate addiction with another addiction to bread. Which is interesting, and goes a step to confirm that what I’m dealing with here is not so much about which foods I eat but something deeper. Which is also why I think that a lot of my struggles and successes with Christ have worked to help a few blog followers that aren’t even struggling with food… but other addictive issues. Or, “replacement” issues… like we are trying to replace the power of Christ with something else. Hmmmmm, I don’t know. Sorta rambling there! Haha!

Anyway, the point. Yes, the point…

So, the main reason that I chose Facebook to fast from during Lent was because Facebook is in the same location as one of my Bibles: on my iPhone. And now whenever I pick up my phone when I have a spare minute to do… something, anything, whatever… if I look at my Bible app and think, “Nah.” Then I automatically “require” of myself to say “Yes” and read my Bible. Even if I already finished my reading for the day (which, by the way, I’m going through this study plan to read through the Bible and it has been great! You read for five days of the week and then get two days “off” to read something else, or in my case, to catch up).

Okay, January, that’s just great… now, how does that apply to the covenant diet?

Yes, yes… of course. Well, as I keep saying, I think that the biggest part of “my” success has been the bible reading that I have been doing throughout this experience. Over and over again the way that God reaches down into my life and “saves” me has been through a verse or story from the Word of God. So, fasting from Facebook has had a triple reward: a) I’m not on Facebook all the time which is just good in and of itself, b) I’m getting to read a lot more of the Bible, c) all the extra Bible reading has worked its way into helping with a renewing and refocusing of my mind and, in turn, helping relieve me of my addiction.

So, as much as I love Facebook to share stuff with, I’m starting to wonder if Facebook is a Fail…

A couple friends of mine have mentioned lately that they have been trying to find the “source” of their overeating (or whatever stronghold they are dealing with). And so I think that I’m gonna decide if that is something I need to do as well, and well I might as well think it through on here…

So, one friend said that she discovered that her over eating was because she grew up in a house with no rules. She was supposed to eat whatever made her happy. Now she really enjoys the “rules” of a system like Weight Watchers because it gives her structure to an area of her life where she felt she could be indulgent before as her one area of “freedom”.

And this makes me think of another friend of mind who adopted a toddler boy from Africa. She was counseled to let him eat whenever he wanted because he might come from a situation where he was a) unable to get food or b) denied food. Naturally this is a case also where looking at his past will influence her decisions with feeding him for years to come.

And now on to those of us who might not have had a terribly structured or unstructured home life when it came to eating and don’t have anything particularly scarring on our pasts. Should we delve into our pasts to, for lack of a better word, “blame” someone or something for our overeating?

Honestly, I still don’t really know. After all, I’m not a counselor or a nutritionist. All I know is that I am a Bible reader, soooooo I’m just gonna see what the Word has to say about it.

And there is this one instance that I can recall of when Jesus heals someone and the past is discussed. Jesus and his disciples are walking around and they see a man who had been blind since birth. The disciples want to know who is to blame for the man’s blindness (because it was pretty much believed that someone’s sin caused their illness), and Jesus replies:

“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”John 9:3

So, I’m not sure if I should “blame” my parents, the girls that were mean to me in elementary school, the media, Satan, etc. or if I should let it go. But I do know that either way, I want for it to enable people to see the power of God in me.

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Meet Me

Hey there, friend, my name is January! Almost two years ago, realizing I was addicted to food (mainly sugar) I made a covenant with God to only eat certain foods and I'm blogging my way through it!

I'd love for you to join me on this journey as we seek God to help us through addiction to food, gluttony, overeating... whatever you want to call it. I truly believe that through covenanting with God that we can be free of this weight that brings us down, and we can move from gluttonous to glorious!